


The Delectable Mountains

by nightfall rising (potionpen), potionpen



Series: Subjectiverse (the truth is what i see it is) [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Class Differences, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Furniture Shopping, Gen, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Not Quite Quite, Post-Hogwarts, Quidditch, Quidditch isn't really a two-person game, This Is Why We CAN Have Nice Things, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, don't worry we got this, fighting covid-induced anxiety with Evan Rosier's heart-eyes, pre-domestic fluff, the title is not ironic guys seriously you may need a dentist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24390193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/nightfall%20rising, https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/potionpen
Summary: In which all manner of terrible events completely fail to show up for work.(OK, some of them are just taking the scenic route on their commute, but the point is they aren't here rightnow.)Contains makeshift Quidditch, variably appalling culinary experimentation, Lucius being a bit much, Severus being awkward and unfair, an Evan too burned out on fretting to pay proper attention to the politics, disgusting quantities of heart-eyes, and a flat filled only with possibility.
Relationships: Evan Rosier/Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Slytherins & etiquette
Series: Subjectiverse (the truth is what i see it is) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/55402
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68





	The Delectable Mountains

**Author's Note:**

> _Therefore the good of the place is before you… The Shepherds, I say, whose names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere, took them by the hand, and had them to their tents, and made them partake of that which was ready at present. They said, moreover, We would that ye should stay here a while, to be acquainted with us...  
>  —John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress_
> 
> **Disclaimer** : profitless fanwork
> 
>  **Warnings** : Pfui.  
> No, wait: Death Eater desserts. Also it might actually be difficult to get an appointment with your dentist right now so idk floss after reading?

_Saturday, June 24, 1978_

“Oh, come on,” Evan laughed, whacking the incoming bludger back at Spike’s face. “It was a perfectly lovely dinner; you know Lucius can’t help being A Bit Much—don’t _kick_ that, you maniac, what is your bat for?”

“Bats are for controlling the insect population,” Spike replied, his pedantic tone perfectly preserved by the speaking-stone stuck behind Evan’s ear, at least, though Ev would have liked to be able to see his crinkly eyes better.

He had just kicked the ball far enough to give himself a good angle to hit it up at the moon, which might give Evan as much as half a minute to try and find the snitch. They were just playing keep-away to work off dinner, so the bludger had been set well below Hogwarts levels of speed and viciousness—though it was also quieter, which made it a bit more challenging. 

It still wouldn’t have posed much of a threat to kids too young for Hogwarts, except that one _made_ for kids would have been lighter and softer. You had to carefully balance your exercise level after a semiformal dinner at Malfoy Manor, so as not to throw off the digestion, even if Ev had been careful to only sip at the excellent wines which had arrived with each new course. It was only beer on his breath that Severus really minded, but anyone who got drunk at a Slytherin party, especially when attending as a guest of honour—which, as members of Slytherin’s latest graduating class, they both had been tonight—deserved what they got.

The snitch was hovering around the light post like a moth, camouflaging itself in the warm glow of the Longlasting Lumos that marked one point in the circumference of the muggle-repelling charm. Evan liked this snitch better than the school’s, on balance; it might be a hair slower, but it was sneakier.

There was a _chitter-thwack-whoomph_ of air behind his neck and he yiped and wheeled in midair, even though he knew this would lose him the snitch again. That was fine—he wasn’t keen on finishing up so soon anyway. The air tonight was the best that London could deliver,[1] practically worthy of the name of Spring, and if they went in Spike would only want to play gobstones again.

Spike was _right there,_ glowering at him, and the bludger had gone off in the direction of Fortesque’s, more or less. “Watch your stupid _back,_ you idiot,” Spike snarled.

“I’ve got you,” Evan excused himself, and barrel-rolled closer to brush over his scared lips with an upside-down butterfly kiss.

Spike yanked him down, jolting his broom, and kissed him harder before shoving him away. “I’m supposed to keep you from catching it!”

“You did,” he pointed out, and hung upside down for a moment to let the lamp-post gild all the hair that had been wind-whipped out of his formal evening-out queue, grinning. The speaking-stones were quiet at this distance from each other, letting them speak for themselves. Nobody was as clever as Spike. Spike deserved a show. Evan could manage that much, at least.

“Couldn’t we do this with quaffles instead of bludgers?” Spike asked plaintively, batting the bludger away from, this time, himself. Evan sighed a little to himself at the waste of good light. “I like quaffles. They obey the laws of physics and don’t try to kill you.”

“I don’t see how two people can play with just quaffles and a snitch,” Evan said sensibly, scanning the field for a golden glint. “It’d just end in you making goal after goal until I caught the thing in five minutes.”

“There must be small group variations,” Severus plotted in frustration. “Someone must know them. Luke?”

“I expect my cousin does, but that’s hardly enough of a reason to speak to him,” Evan said cheerfully. “On your left!”

The last time he’d spoken to Sirius was to explain to him that everybody in Wizarding Britain knew all about how kind and charming and funny and responsible and clever he and his friends had been at school, and that nobody was ever going to hire them. 

He hadn’t claimed responsibility, but he trusted his cousin to read between the lines. Siri was more like an overpowered bludger than any Beater should be, Evan felt: aggressive, impulsive, very nearly out of control, blind to consequence with a great potential for damage, and not remotely slow.

They both knew that gossip faded, but it would take a few years, and by that time Sirius and his friends would be substantially behind everyone their age in terms of employment experience unless they figured out a business where Potter was the one paying them. 

Which, Ev would concede, they might well have done anyway, just because they were close friends with no great regard for outside authority. Regardless, Sirius was absolutely going to _slow-spit-roast himself_ from knowing his friends had no other choice and it was both his family’s doing and his own fault. 

The best revenge, he considered happily, was one where you didn’t actually make anything happen that wouldn’t have happened anyway (or, at least, _shouldn’t_ have, in a just world), but your target’s ability to take pleasure in his circumstances was soured forever.

“Well, we have to come up with a functional variation somehow,” Spike argued, ducking without looking. “While I grant you that racing goals-to-snitch isn’t much of a game, this is madness.” 

“I don’t mind making the bludger kiddie-soft if it’d stop you ripping your hair out,” Evan offered. “I like your hair.”

“Mental,” Spike grumbled, because two years with things openly settled between them had only taught him how to recognize a compliment as distinct from mockery, not how to take one. He shot a spell to paralyze the bludger as it came back to them. It hovered malevolently in midair, chittering thwarted threats at them. “What if we charm them both to attack and I stay on strict defence?”

“That could work for games where we want to be on the same team,” Evan supposed. “We could do that tonight if you like. But Andi says when you’re living alone with even your most favourite person in the world you want to smack them sometimes, so we do need to work out something to play against each other, Spike.”

“Most favourite,” Spike repeated in linguistic pain.

Deliberately misunderstanding him, Evan hovered close again and explained, “That’s you. You’re my most favourite.”

Spike got that _I don’t know whether it’s more disgusting for you to say something so soppy or for me to like it_ helpless look, and let himself be tenderly and cheerfully snogged.

“We could play tig,” Evan offered, checking to see whether he could undo Severus’s collar button with his nose (not yet, but that was no reason to give up).

This won him one of those little, incredulous _oh dear god, you are so POSH_ Spike-grins, tucked into his temple as though that would stop him seeing it. “Can you possibly mean tag?”

“I mean one person’s seeker and the other’s beater, either on defence, if we want to be on the same team, or on offence. With the bludger spelled for random flying instead of targeted to us when it’s offence, so there’s something for the beater to actually _do_. And as soon as the seeker catches the snitch we switch off.”

Spike considered. “Freeze the bludger long enough to pass the bat over?”

“Until we get the hang of swapping,” Evan agreed, rolling his eyes a little, fondly.

“It’s not as if we have Madam Pomfrey living in our building anymore,” Spike huffed.

“I have every confidence in you.”

“Which is terrifying and unjustified in this context, but putti—are you sticking out your tongue at me? How old are you?”

“Not as old as you,” Evan retorted cheerfully. He hadn’t been, but he would have admitted, if pressed, that he’d been thinking about it very hard.

“ _One season,_ Bullhorns,” Spike scoffed. “Putting _that_ aside, too, what if _I_ get hurt? You’re the one who’s used to dodging while looking all over the place for something else, not me. I always know where the goals are; chasers just have to look out for the obstacles.”

“St. Mungo’s is a ten-minute walk from here and we have brooms _and_ apparition licenses,” Ev pointed out, though the objection might have weighed with him if he’d ever seen Severus get hit when fewer than three things were coming at him at once, after his first year in the air. “They’ll be shirty if we come in this late, but they won’t be _closed."  
_

Spike pursed his lips. “If we’re only playing with one bat, we’re making the balls softer,” he negotiated sternly. 

Considering that Spike had no evident qualms about diving into a cloud of professional strength bludgers himself during normal games, often aimed by people who genuinely wanted to break his limbs, Evan had to try rather hard, for the sake of healthy exercise and getting some adrenaline into his week, not to melt at this. “Okay, but if you’re making them soft there should be two of them,” he negotiated back. “When we’re playing same-team, anyway. I suppose if there’s two when the beater’s on offence, hunting one down to whack at it is less of a challenge. Or we could have one random, and one attacking us both? That way we both have to dodge, but the beater still has something useful to do.”

“We could cover them with chalk and the winner will be two out of three best in fewest hits taken, most hits landed, and catches made,” Spike proposed, brightening at the prospect of fending off a little chaos he could trust to be harmless. “Dark blue chalk, so they’re harder to spot.”

“And after we agreed I’d do the laundry!” Evan cried in a lot more outrage than he actually felt (he was sure they’d figure out how to have the bludgers leave temporary marks with magic), so as to have an excuse to tackle Severus.

Neither of them felt like playing more afterwards, even to try out the new rules, and in fact Evan would have forgotten the bats and balls (though not their brooms, obviously; those were safely shrunken in his pocket. He was very fond of his own, and Spike’s was on loan from Reggie until the poor thing recovered from that last match against Ravenclaw) if Spike hadn’t eyebrowed him when he wand-brushed the grass-stains off his knees and turned for the street. 

“I’m amazed nobody else wanted to use the pitch,” Spike criticized the laziness of humanity mellowly as they wandered home (HOME HOME THEY HAD A HOME), not holding hands or better because Spike felt Evan shouldn’t be tarred with him (Ev was working on this lunacy, but neither common sense nor logic had done any good so far) but letting their shoulders and fingers brush as they walked. “It’s not as if the weather is bad.”

“It is quite late,” Evan pointed out. The weather was, in fact, beautiful for a city, with a thick spread of stars above the streetlight haze, and soft breezes that had turned cool an hour or so ago. “Do you think anything’s open?” It seemed unlikely, but if there was anywhere in the wizarding world where you could get a bite to eat at ten in the evening, surely it was in Diagon Alley.

“Maybe in Knockturn,” Spike said dubiously.

“I don’t think I want any pudding that comes out of Knockturn Alley, Spike.”

“You had pudding at Luke’s,” Severus pointed out. “He made an incredibly pompous speech about everyone having a chocolate frog their first time on the train—which I did not, and to be frank I do not consider it to have been in good taste for him to mention first times on the train in my presence—and now we as adults could close the circle with an adult version.” 

Amused, Evan asked, “Did you think I was asleep, or have you been wanting to complain about that since he opened his mouth?”

“He used the word ‘adult’ nine times. I counted.”

“Well, Reggie’s class did all hit seventeen last year, except Twintrees; it was nice of him to make them feel included. I mean to say, the party was nominally for us, and there’s a limited extent they can participate in the after-dinner job-politicking while they’re still at school, other than hunting around for openings and apprenticeships.”

“Ha,” Severus said darkly. “ _I_ think he was fishing for us to ask about his stupid club now that even those of us who have jobs lined up will have our evenings free.”

“His stupid club which is my dad’s stupid club,” Evan reminded him out of a vague sense of family loyalty, without much caring. He supposed they’d have to join it eventually, or at least he would, or endure pointed hints for the rest of his days and miss out on gossip and networking, but he didn’t actually disagree with Spike.

“All gentlemen’s clubs are stupid, with the possible exception of the Diogenes. And while I _am_ glad that Luke didn’t end up having us hopping off after anatomically correct frogs—”

_“What?”_

“Well, he kept going _on_ about their being adult; I couldn’t imagine what else he meant!”

“I assumed he meant they had liqueur in, personally. Which they did.”

”I thought the same at first, but he was so emphatic. I was sure they were going to be anatomically correct. Or, rather, anatomically incorrect with improbable proportions. While I was pleased to be wrong, I don’t think his presenting us with ones you could dissect was either in any better taste than bringing up the Express or conducive to the appetite.”

“Narcissa’s face,” Evan agreed dreamily, “was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Not that it isn’t usually, but the way she hesitated with that pained smile over her fork and then reached for the wineglass instead...” 

“You, I may point out, took seconds.”

“No, I had yours after you made it hop off your plate, so Luke wouldn’t be insulted,” he corrected. “On top of the injury, I mean. Cissa’s never going to let him choose _a single menu_ item once they’re married, you wait.”

“And a terrible sacrifice eating mine was for you, I’m sure,” Severus agreed with a sideling amused look that completely agreed with him about Narcissa’s future party-hosting tyranny.

“It was very tasty,” Evan said, “and you should have had some of yours; you would have liked it if you’d just ignored how it looked. But it was also very dark-chocolatey and fruity. I’d like a bite of toast or custard. Something comfortable and warm-tasting.”

“I’ll heat you up some milk with nutmeg,” Spike offered. “With something in it?”

“Mmm… no, nothing else in it, but still toast,” Ev decided. “If it’s that dark bread you like, will you have some with me?”

“I shall eat it with my hands like a chimpanzee,” Spike announced haughtily, “and treasure my escape from ‘civilization.’ _Honestly."_

“He can’t help being brought up absurdly,” Evan laughed, not bothering to ask if Spike thought there was some other way one was meant to eat toast.

" _Eight forks per person!”_ Spike didn’t exactly shout in the nocturnal tranquillity of a residential street, but his eyes flashed incredulity and his hiss was intense.

“It was a party, Spike.” Evan couldn’t resist reaching out to squeeze his wrist comfortingly. “It was very nice of him to throw it for us all. I think it’s a lovely tradition, although it’ll soon get out of control if he goes on inviting all the Slytherins between his own year and the current sixth-years. But I’m sure Slughorn would approve. And I don’t think he eats like that every night.”

“He said that wasn’t even the good silverware. Goldware. I don’t know why you’d think he doesn’t.”

Evan grinned at him; it was unlikely that Lucius had a nine-course dinner every night, even if he always finished off with a slimming potion. Besides, explaining that the cutlery was second-best was a very Lucius sort of thoughtless-insult, to be sure, but really. “How did this come up?”

“I congratulated him on having ninety-seven billion gold forks out of politeness and incredulity—”

“Oh, _Spike._ ”

“Well, you said he likes to have the chandelier complimented! I thought you meant he likes having his money noticed.”

“Probably,” Ev admitted, “but not, you know, _out loud._ What I meant was he thinks the four hundred pound diamond monstrosity is beautiful and throws light around in a way that is fairylike and attractive and lends a delicate weight to an occasion rather than a way that is overblown, over-formal, self-conscious, braggadocious, and requires me to take a migraine potion in advance every time I come to visit.”

“...Ah.”

Evan realized Severus was Looking at him. “Of course I took one,” he said, smiling with fond exasperation. “You’d have noticed if I didn’t, Spike; I’d have gone cranky and quiet.”

“You don’t get as cranky as you think you do out loud,” Spike said suspiciously, “and sometimes you’re quiet anyway. Did you take a _commercial_ one?”

“...Spike,” Evan laughed, “you haven’t unpacked yet. We don’t have furniture to unpack your things _into."_

“There’s such a thing as an Accio,” Spike insisted, stubbornly mad at Evan for introducing low-quality and potentially stale potions into Evan’s system.

“Spike, we don’t have any left,” Evan reminded him, laughing and only barely managing not to hug him. Spike had been supplying three-quarters of the school with potions for calming down, staying awake, memory-improvement, headaches, and stress-induced insomnia for more or less all of their last term at school, and demand had gone up sharply in the final two months. 

It had more than paid for Spike’s portion of their first month and the tenancy deposit, but his determination to do his part in supporting them had left him going to Madam Pomfrey for his own potions. He’d saved some for Evan, but although Ev had expected to feel more relaxed about his NEWTs than most (Grandpère had learned, after Evan got into the Ancient Runes NEWT class after more or less falling asleep on his OWL, that his protege didn’t always test at the level of his real understanding, so bad scores weren’t a real threat to Ev’s future career), he’d ended up being much more wound up than he expected, and had needed them all.

He told people it was because of the essays. He _hated_ essay questions, and had been genuinely worried he’d end up having to resort to cartoons to get his point across again.[2] In fact he’d been braced for Potter’s mob to try to sabotage Severus’s NEWTs the way they’d tried to wreck his OWLs. They’d been behaving better since then, but Evan had been sure they wouldn’t be able to pass up one last chance. 

Nothing had happened that was bad enough to really upset Severus--just a few clashes of opportunity. The Gryffindors had been as preoccupied as everyone else, fortunately, between Lupin taking the tests seriously and Pettigrew panicking about them and Potter desperately trying to get Evans to agree to marry him before she left school and didn’t have to see him every day. But Evan hadn’t breathed properly once after April Fool’s Eve until they left King’s Cross for their new apartment and closed the door on the world.

He, for one, was quite grateful to Lucius for hosting a dinner, awful birds and chandeliers aside. In Ev’s opinion, getting Severus out of Hogwarts _deserved_ a celebration.

And it was really quite cheering anytime Severus wasn’t the most socially inept person at a party. Not that Ev didn’t thoroughly enjoy Spike bulldozing his way through social conventions and then getting as flustered about it as the downiest Ravenclaw who’d never bothered to learn not to read at the table, but it was so useful to be able to teach him what was expected by pointing at _other_ people’s blunders and laughing.

“I meant you hadn't unpacked your brewing things, not potions I've already drunk. He really just came out and said it’s not the good set? Was he trying to make you,” Evan groped for a possible benign-but-clumsy motive, “feel comfortable about using it, since it isn’t as important to him?”

Spike shrugged. “He said that since the invitation list adds another group of _adult_ Slytherins every year it very quickly got too big to use the good set, since it wasn’t really a set so much as a collection and it would be obvious if he used a geminus on it. Yes: he said it _again."_

“Well, ‘grown-up’ sounds so childish,” Evan pointed out, grinning.

“‘Adult’ sounds childish too, after the third repetition,” Severus sneered elegantly. Evan was really going to have to ask his tailor to put pockets for a sketch-book in all his clothes, now he didn’t need to cart a bookbag around all the time anymore. “And then he went on about the provenance of this set until Rus pulled him off to start that Exploding Tarot game. Defensive, I thought.” 

“Of course he was,” Evan laughed. Lucius seemed completely unable to stop himself being flashily conspicuous, even when he knew it wasn’t quite what was done, much in the same way that Severus couldn’t stop himself shouting at the world to be better even though he knew it didn’t help. 

On this occasion, however, it seemed to Ev that Severus had probably made Lucius feel he’d done something tawdry when he was, for once, behaving normally. That really wasn’t fair. Ev would have to get Narcissa to reassure him, since Evan was hardly going to apologize for Spike’s instinctive understanding that understatement was one of the cornerstones of good taste. 

Still, Lucius _hadn’t_ been overdoing things this time, and Ev was a bit puzzled over Spike reacting so strongly to ordinary good hosting-manners. “You should be used to gold cutlery from school, though. It’s nothing special.”

This got him a flat look. “Hogwarts is, A, trying to prevent students like Luke from complaining to their parents that they’re being treated like peasants, B, trying to persuade students like me that we want to be part of the amazing and wonderful and luxurious wizarding world and not go crying home half-trained to blow up the universe, and, C, uniformly laughable. Not the good silverware. Good grief. What _is_ the good silverware if his gold set isn’t it, I’d like to know.”

“Oh, they’ve probably got some uncomfortable 16th-century set his dad takes out for impressing the ministry people,” Evan shrugged. “Handles carved like the death of Cleopatra or Fenris Wolf eating the moon, that sort of thing. Granddad—my grandfather Black—has a few sets like that. The Elizabethan one is easier to use, even if they hadn’t quite understood how to make forks by that point. The Carolinian ones squirm around under your hand. Not really Elizabethan, I mean—those sets are usually Italian and Middle Eastern, but from then. The Avery’s have a 9th century set that’s an absolute beast to eat from—only two prongs, you know, though they don’t squirm. You should ask Avery about it, next time you see him, so you don’t have to talk about anything he wants to talk about. It’s not at all what you want, when you’re eating, but you know that lot, anything old.”

He turned, because Spike had stopped several paces back. With a most peculiar expression on his face, too. “They squirm.”

“Well, you know, if it’s of Fenris eating the moon he’ll keep swallowing it all through the meal, that sort of thing,” Evan explained. “Not squirm, necessarily, but a lot of them do move under your hand. Granddad had one of Wendelin the Wyrd in the flames. Siri just couldn’t _stop_ making rude jokes about it once we hit twelve or so, but I think it was his way of getting sent away from table to have supper in his room.”

“Did they curse you if you used them for the wrong course?” Spike asked. Ev could place his expression now: morbid fascination.

Ev blinked. “I expect so. But I can’t imagine anyone being allowed to eat with Granddad if they didn’t know what fork to use.”

Spike eyed him. “Are we going to have gold cutlery?” he asked dolefully, the implication being that Evan was liable to think any daft thing was normal and Severus would just have to go along with it despite being a sensible person, for no good reason.

Tilting his head, he confessed, “I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose we’ll have to, at least for when we have people over, even if you don’t want to eat off it normally.”

“But why do we have to?” Spike was giving him tragic eyes now, eyes that begged for sanity in a world of purebloods. He evidently didn’t want to end their walk yet, because that was the turn for their street and he’d walked right past it.

“That was Dye-Urn,” Evan pointed out, in case he’d only missed the sign in the dark.

“I don’t suppose they charge admission to the gardens at night,” Spike said innocently.

“They also don’t _l_ _et people in_ at night,” Evan laughed.

“We ought to figure out if their security also keeps wizards away,” the Naj proposed without an iota of shiftiness or shame. “The ministry won’t care as long as we take reasonable precautions to keep the muggles from finding out. I assume you meant us to stay in this flat for some time, so we should really get to know the neighbourhood.”

“How much of a holy terror were you, growing up?” Keeping from snugging up against his arm wasn’t really the hardest thing Ev had ever done, of course, but it felt like it just then.

“Only as much as they made me be.”

“Made you be by charging admission.”

“What’s the point of charging admission when everyone in the area’s on the d—scraping by on government charity or at best, if they’re lucky, factory wages?” Spike asked reasonably. “Which, for context, would not, if saved for a year, buy one of your waistcoats, let alone one of your shoes.”

“You mean a pair of my shoes?”

“I do not. Either you won’t have attendance enough to cover the use of the space, or what you really mean is ‘admission is ‘promising not to throw tomatoes and to tell everyone our music is tops,’ but please pay if you can and signal you will pay by coming in the front door where the bloke will be asking for money, please do not embarrass yourself or the bloke at the door by coming in that way if you don’t mean to make a donation.’”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what they meant,” Evan laughed, and gave up and twined their arms and fingers together.

Spike put up with this in the long-suffering way that meant Ev was pouring warm water over his dry roots, but accused, “You still haven’t said why we have to eat off fripperies.”

“Just when we have people over, if you don’t like it,” Evan shrugged, running a light thumb over Spike’s. “It’s only polite, though. Mind you, I can't say I see much reason not to, when one already has them.”

Spike huffed. “Oh, I see. It’s an opportunity for people to show what good table manners they have by not biting the tines all awry.”

“Er, I suppose?” There was, of course, magic to prevent that anyway, but he was sure Spike knew that really. “Mostly it’s a good-faith gesture.”

“As in I know you won’t steal my spoons? As in The Sonne in its Splendour doth condescend to shine on the Moste Felicitous Occasioun of our Merrie Meeting; You’re So Worth It?”

“As in Look, I haven’t put any potions in your food, you’d taste it, I’m not masking the flavours with my flatware at all,” Evan explained. He considered it, and allowed, “I suppose there’s something in the merry meeting idea. When you take sunshine as… as a metaphor for not letting the true nature of things be hidden.”

Spike stopped again. His eyes widened. _“Oh,”_ he breathed. “Because it’s _nonreactive."_

“Right,” Evan agreed. “Sort of a promise that even if the guests are playing games with each other, the host is neutral.”

“Which, I assume, is always a lie.”

“It might be true for Ravenclaws? Occasionally? And _Hogwarts_ is, even though the Headmaster probably isn’t ever. The elves are, anyway, and they’re the ones making the food, and serving it. But, you know, at least neutral in the sense of observing guest-rights for everybody. Also, Mum always says it makes pudding taste better, though I think that’s just because when the spoon is heavy the pudding feels more like it was made with cream than water. Er, or I s’pose it might be a diplomatic way of saying other metals make it taste worse.”

_“Acid.”_

Evan was about to ask, _what?_ But it was evident Spike had stopped listening. His eyes had that faraway burning look with the faintly upturned lips that boded, not necessarily well or ill, but decidedly experimental.

“Even nonpoisonous metals will react to acid and salts, even if it’s benignly,” he mused. “And that’s just _chemistry,_ that’s not even taking into account that dairy-from-cows is under Saturn and the moon and so needs the influence of Venus or the sun to bring it warmth—gold will serve for both those planets… _Evan.”_

“We can’t stay up all night making colour-coded charts,” Evan said hastily. “We’re meeting Narcissa quite early to go look at furniture and it’s quite late enough as it is. Remember? She made you promise over the abalone.”

“I wouldn’t trust my transfiguration for the utensils in potions,” Spike stroked his lips with maniacal black eyes, like the gorgeous mad alchemist that schemed with abandon deep inside his painfully practical heart, “but cookery is much more forgiving… Do you think we could get Luke’s cook to give us the shells from tonight, if they haven’t thrown them away? Speaking of abalone. I’m sure I’ve heard of people eating off mother-of-pearl. Only I’m not sure I could transfigure it without examining its structure a bit. Knowing what it should look like might be enough for _some_ people...”

“Well,” Evan sighed, bypassing this grumpy dig at himself for finding one (single, solitary, extremely lonely) subject easier than Spike did, “we’ve got three more weeks to arrange the flat and learn to survive without elves washing our socks before you said you’d be at work—”

“I am perfectly capable of washing my own socks.”

“Not perfectly, Spike. I mean, when you’re done with them they’re definitely clean, but they look ten years older.”

Spike twitched in annoyance but evidently didn’t care to point out that all his clothes were at least ten years old to begin with. 

Which was just as well for him, because that was actually Evan’s point: he’d never had any practice keeping good clothes looking good because all his clothes had always been awful. Except for the ones the Malfoys had paid for as part of his salary, and Abraxas Malfoy’s terrifying elf had fed him cold tea for a week when he’d tried to take care of those himself. Twice, because Spike was stubborn, but only twice, because Spike could take a hint. He just insisted on making it clear that while he was perfectly willing to be obliging, he could heat his own ruddy tea and punishment was only getting his back up where a quiet word would have sufficed.

(Which was a downright lie, because if Cranny had politely hinted that it was his job and his privilege to wash all the clothes in Malfoy Manor and would the junior potioneer _please_ just put them in the laundry-banishing basket Spike would have insisted that it was no trouble and they would have been locked in an increasingly snarly oh-no-I-couldn’t-possibly-put-you-to-the-trouble battle for possibly hours.)

Not that Evan had a lot of practice with laundering charms, either, beyond getting simple stains out before they’d set. But he’d always been able to learn all but the most complicated charms he put his mind to, even if he wasn’t brilliant enough to make his own, like Spike. And at least he knew what good clothes were _supposed_ to look like. 

He might ask Andi. She didn’t have even the option of borrowing an elf these days, unless Cissa was sneaking her some of Melly’s time; she must have learned some good domestic charms. And there was always the bookstore.

Right down the street.

There was a bookshop right down the street from _their flat which was theirs._

It was theirs for at least a year and Spike had _agreed to live with him in it._

But you couldn’t let yourself be too distracted by glorying over the last thing Spike had done, because the next thing was so likely to be trouble.

“Either way, it’s three weeks to get ourselves sorted out so we’re not trying to figure everything out while you’re working full time and Grandpère has me practising portrait magic every living hour I’m not actually painting. So _once we are not sitting on our school trunks to eat_ _off a table made of an engorgified history textbook_ you can play with food-and-cutlery pairings all you like. Just don’t feed me any fruit in a tin spoon, will you? As I recall, Jupiter doesn’t play well with Titans, alchemically speaking.”

Spike looked at him, the gleam returning, softening, and deepening.

Laughing, Evan disclaimed this undue credit. “I’m hardly going to forget something that basic _t_ _wo weeks after our Potions NEWT,_ Spike.”

“Nevertheless,” Spike declared with an air of great and deliberate decision, turning Evan around by the elbow and striding off again for their street, “I find my curiosity about muggle gardens temporarily subdued, and I believe you wished for toast.”

Severus was going to make him toast and a hot sleepy-making bedtime drink, with his own hands, in _their flat._ Which they would be sleeping in, together.

Without Avery snoring or Mulciber plotting across the room. Because Avery and Mulciber had not come home from the end of school party with them, because Avery and Mulciber no longer lived with them even a little bit and would never again have the chance to do something nasty to Spike in his sleep. 

The bed they would be sleeping in was, as it had been all week, a slightly dusty-smelling 17th-century monstrosity borrowed from one of the Rosier Hall guest rooms, but they were going furniture shopping with Narcissa tomorrow.

All he had to do was keep walking, and Spike would hustle him home.

* * *

1 Ev might have been a bit spoiled by Hampshire and Hogsmeade; he’d been to Diagon before, of course, but only for the afternoon. The only cities he’d spent this long in were intentionally picturesque, and the utilitarian feel and industrial smell of his native capital, even in its quirky wizarding quarter, was turning out to be a bit of a shock. He was going to have to get Severus in the habit of getting out into the country in the evenings and on weekends right away, well before either of them started work, even if it meant furnishing the flat took longer. [return to text]

2 He ended up doing his entire History NEWT in cartoons, mostly because it was faster. Either he’d included enough by way of captions or the NEWT board’s standards for History were in a state of complete despair, because he not only passed but passed well. He suspected they just weren’t used to having anyone pass, so that everyone who did had exceeded expectation, but publicly claimed that anyone would do well if they could just get Severus to read them the material. [return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to betas plutoplex and ZiggyCas! Mistakes probably happened after they were done.
> 
>  **Original prompt by anonni-no** :  
> So, I just learned that gold cutlery is considered the best not (just) because it's such a precious material, but because it's chemically so nonreactive that when eating with it you taste ONLY the food, not the cutlery.  
> Obvious question: to what extent did Severus notice this difference at Hogwarts, and how does he integrate this knowledge when he's cooking for Evan?


End file.
